Seven Challenges of Photographing Destination Weddings

Every wedding presents a photographer with a unique challenge, whether it’s next door or in the next country. But destination weddings up the ante on complex logistics, not to mention all the heightened emotions, unpredictable personalities and countless other moving parts involved. To be successful within this wedding niche, a photographer needs to be especially proactive in his or her planning and confident in capturing the shots that count.

1. Managing Travel And Mastering Locations

According to Javon Longieliere, international wedding photographer and author of Destination Weddings: The Photographer’s Guide to Shooting in Exotic and Unexpected Locations, destination weddings are addictive. During his first wedding in Paris, he found himself thinking, “‘This is the pinnacle of my career. It's never going to get better than this.’ It’s almost like a drug,” he says. “There will never be the high that you had the first time.”

As business grew for Longieliere and his wife, Dawn, their initial plan to piggyback vacation time onto work travel got sidelined by a growing workload. “We were like, OK, this is obviously not stopping, and we don’t have time for a vacation everywhere we